In recovery for over 10 years Antony has gone on to offer his knowledge of mental health and substance misuse to homeless shelters, county lines and schools. He gives us his insider view of the ways in which our mental health services are set up to deal, not with the root cause of issues, but often only the effects. Showing that addiction is often widely misunderstood.
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Antony
The majority of my working life, I worked in higher education.
I had two jobs, because I worked in education, I only worked nine months of the year, so I had three months of the year, where I wasn't working. So I had a second job just to bring in an extra income as my wife did. We both worked in the two same jobs. We had four jobs between us and it was a fantastic lifestyle, but I soon became aware that there was a continued approach to, even say for instance, the amount of times "I've got anxiety, cause I've got an interview, I'm not sure I can do this." And then the general approach was, well, maybe you should go back to your doctor and see if you can get your medication increased. Or maybe you need it changing. Not, let's have a look at this anxiety.
You know, and then I've got depression, and I'm not even exaggerating this. I try to keep this in reality, not minimize or, or maximize. I try to keep it in reality. Now I'm gonna make up a hypothetical person, but hopefully captures the reality of my experience. There would be an overweight, um, Young person, 18 years old that stayed away all night on an Xbox, smoked weed, drank RedBull, was sleeping around, eating one pot noodle a day.
When they got paid, they would go out and eat McDonald's.
Lester
How hypothetical is that?
Antony
This is reality. And then they're saying, I'm depressed, but it's the reality of it.
Lester
But you're kind of meant to be depressed, that's a healthy emotion if you're living that lifestyle.
Antony
But on this side of the fence, there was no discussion of, we need to tell 'em stop living this lifestyle. We can't do that. Cause you might hurt their feelings. What we need to do is say look, he's got his doctor down the road, you need to go in and he'll give you more medication.
And there was no discussion.
Lester
How old were the kids?
Antony
In this context, and I won't name the organization.
Lester
No, I think you're right. I think that's a general, it's a general approach around the country.
Antony
Yeah, 16 to 24 when I was working in these hostels.
Lester
So what was it they were hoping, what would be the outcome they were hoping for?
They were supporting his lifestyle?
Antony
Yes. Their lifestyle. Supporting the lifestyle. I was looking last night, I, I spent 20 minutes just having a few look at things ready for this and the harm reduction initiative strategy, you could almost say that the same approach is a cop out approach. It's just to keep everything relatively quiet and relatively good, you know, but without trying to progress.
Lester
So what would've been the hope then? What would've been the best outcome that they would be expecting once they got everything they want?
Antony
I'm just gonna get straight to the point. And you know what? There was no hope other than this, make sure they're not calling the paramedics once a week because they're overdosing because that's not looking good on paper, try and make sure that they have a 'successful move on' because that was important.
Lester
These were conversations or were these just...
Antony
No, but that was the general feeling. I didn't pick up on this after three months of working there, it was after years of working there that the cracks start to appear. And maybe that's just because of my awareness and I was empowered, when I was on the other side of the fence, to completely transform my life and my response to life. So all I saw was in a legal and moderated and trying to be safe way. We was just making things worse.